Washington, D.C. — Today, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute (E&E Legal) released a short 50 second video juxtaposing Hillary Clinton’s emphatic vow during her party’s presidential primaries last spring, that she intends to put “a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business”, with visual reminders of the suffering that agenda has already imposed. Clinton made the comments at a town hall meeting in Ohio, a state that has suffered significantly by the current Administration’s “War on Coal”, which then-candidate Obama announced with similar remarks to the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board.

“What is clear from Hillary Clinton’s chilling promise to continue killing mining jobs, with obvious and already devastating impacts on those communities, is that she is advocating the same ‘green’ energy policies that benefit her billionaire friends like Tom Steyer with little or no regard for the harms these policies impose ” said E&E Legal Executive Director Craig Richardson. “When you contrast the lavish lifestyles of the rich and famous who are pushing, and benefiting from, the politician-backed ‘renewable energy’ industry with the hardworking Americans from the coal industry whose lives and towns stand ruined you get a real sense for the heartlessness of these policies and those who push them.”

Electoral politics is a very calculating and often terribly compromising business. Recent articles suggest that Mrs. Clinton’s presidential candidacy has not connected with the ‘millennial’ voters who were so critical to President Obama’s victories, a deficiency she plans to remedy by making further such promises. For example, The Atlantic recently published an article, “Millennial Voters May Cost Hillary Clinton the Election,” which said Clinton “must overcome her own long history of failing to connect with this growing group of voters—a failure that is increasingly worrying Democrats as the overall race tightens.” Numerous outlets suggest that this will lead to Mrs. Clinton and her political allies now escalating this same agenda, as Congress is also considering how to reverse it, making this an important and current topic of policy discussion.

“Coal is responsible for 1/3rd of this country’s electricity generation, and those who produce it domestically are facing an all out war from some who are trying to win elections,” added Richardson. “It’s no wonder so many Americans have had enough of corporate cronies, politicians, and most especially policies that are destroying their lives.”

The Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) is a 501(c)(3) organization engaged in strategic litigation, policy research, and public education on important energy and environmental issues. Primarily through its petition litigation and transparency practice areas, E&E Legal seeks to correct onerous federal and state policies that hinder the economy, increase the cost of energy, eliminate jobs, and do little or nothing to improve the environment.